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Polluters will pay: when is the crucial question

Paddy Manning

Hang on a second. If Australia's richest person, the mining magnate Gina Rinehart, is such an avid climate sceptic, how come the environmental impact statement (EIS) for her affiliate Hancock Galilee's massive Kevin's Corner coalmine in Queensland blandly accepts there is a ''direct relationship between greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature'' and that over the 30-year life of the mine ''it is reasonable to expect an annual temperature increase in the proximity of 1 degree Celsius''?

Rinehart, remember, supported a recent tour of Australia by the British climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton and earlier this year told AustralianMining: ''I have never met a geologist, or leading scientist, who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.''

The EIS goes on to describe, in sobering detail, the likely impacts of climate change over the life of the project, including on inland areas of Queensland: ''Annually, temperatures are expected to increase and rainfall decrease. Evaporation is expected to increase, as is wind speed. This would likely result in a drier, windier landscape that has fewer cyclone events … but the cyclone events that do occur are likely to be more intense and possibly destructive.

''Given the predicted decline in rainfall and increased evaporation, soil moisture and availability and quality of water are predicted to be affected.''

The executive director of Hancock Galilee's parent company Hancock Prospecting, Tad Watroba, told Weekend Business that nothing in the company's attitude towards climate change had changed. ''Nobody with a reasonable mind could disagree that climate change is happening,'' he said. His objection was the ''stupid concept'' that we are the cause.

''It's got nothing to do with human activity,'' Watroba said. ''It's been happening since day one.''

Kevin's Corner is 100 per cent owned by India's GVK group, as part of a $US1.26 billion deal finalised in September, under which Hancock remains a 21 per cent partner in two proposed mines nearby: Alpha Coal (Tad's Corner) and Alpha West (Paul's Corner).

The EIS only counts scope one (direct) and scope two (indirect; from energy used during mining) emissions from the Kevin's Corner mine, which holds about 4.3 billion tonnes of thermal coal and which, if approved, will eventually produce 30 million tonnes per annum.

The statement predicts these emissions, about 1.3 per cent of Queensland's emissions a year, will total 58.6 million tonnes of CO2, or equivalent, over 30 years and notes that these are ''materially relevant'', whether in a state or national context.

But remember, scope one and two emissions only count for roughly 2 per cent of the total climate impact of the development. The other 98 per cent of the emissions from Kevin's Corner will be scope three - accounted overseas, where the coal is burned - and that's where things get scary.

Releasing the EIS, Queensland's valiant Deputy Premier, Andrew Fraser, said the $6.6 billion project could create 2500 jobs during construction, 1500 jobs over the life of the mine, and was a ''massive vote of confidence in the state''.

Queensland wants these mines up and running. Kevin's Corner is just part of a whole new coal province - the Galilee Basin - that is set to rival the Bowen Basin, which has underpinned the state's coal exports for decades. "The development of the Galilee Basin as a major centre for coalmining, processing and export is important to the future economic prosperity of Queensland," Fraser said.

Apart from the three Hancock coalmines mentioned earlier, with combined reserves of 7.9 billion tonnes, there are other huge mines planned: Clive Palmer's China First coalmine (3.7 billion tonnes) and the massive Carmichael project proposed by another Indian company, Adani, which is still to submit an environmental impact statement but which aims to export more than 60 million tonnes per annum for 150 years.

Further south in the Surat Basin, Xstrata is proposing its massive Wandoan mine, already approved by state and federal governments but the subject of a groundbreaking Queensland Land Court challenge by Friends of the Earth Brisbane.

Chris McGrath, a barrister and University of Queensland environmental law expert who is representing the plaintiffs, is careful in his comments, as he is awaiting the court's judgment.

The Wandoan case is being argued on the basis that the state's acts that guide environmental approvals, and which will guide the Land Court, require consideration of the principles of ecologically sustainable development, including long-term implications and global environmental considerations.

Friends of the Earth's closing submission says that Xstrata's group manager of climate change, Cassandra McCarthy, had acknowledged the environmental impact of the company's coal production when giving her evidence and that the company had said: ''We also fully recognise that the current and predicted level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the burning of fossil fuels (of which coal is most polluting …) under a business-as-usual scenario are unsustainable and need to be addressed with considerable urgency and innovation."

Who could argue otherwise? Friends of the Earth presented evidence by a climate change researcher, Malte Meinshausen, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Melbourne University, that the projected 1.3 gigatonnes of cumulative emissions from the coal extracted and burned from this one mine - more than twice Australia's annual emissions - was the same amount of greenhouse gas that the country would need to cut over a decade, if it aimed to reduce its emissions by 35 per cent by 2020 compared to business as usual.

Whichever way the court finds, the decision is likely to be appealed and appealed again. The approval process, which began in 2007, will drag on for another year or two at least.

Friends of the Earth Brisbane's co-ordinator, Derec Davies, says the organisation has spent about $200,000 on the case so far, provided by mostly anonymous wealthy donors whom Davies says are determined and well-connected internationally.

Friends of the Earth has been inspired by the success of the Sierra Club in the US, which has stopped the development of more than 100 coalmines and coal-fired power stations by legal challenges.

In the absence of government action, Chris McGrath believes the court system has an important role to play in climate protection.

He says there will be more and more litigation, just like the raft of legal challenges to tobacco and asbestos manufacturers. And he believes that, in a similar fashion to those industries, attempts by mining companies to deny and obfuscate the impact of their industries on the environment over a long time will worsen their ultimate liability.

Big emitters and their financiers - not countries - will be the main focus of climate change litigation, McGrath says, with the likelihood of cases to be brought in Australia next year.

Friends of the Earth's Davies is on a roll: ''They call it the coal boom. We call it the coal bubble.

''They're on their last legs trying to extract as much as possible before they get taken over by the renewables transformation.''